r/cbradio

Stopped right after I stopped recording

Hello, i have a 05-09 mustang gt that i want to put one of my cbs in to, and i want a pretty tall antenna too. Im thinking atleast 7-10 feet of antenna. (Car is in picture). I would prefer a way to mount it to the trunk, and hold a cb antenna and base. If any of you have one for sale or know of one for sale that would work please let me know. My cb going in it is a Galaxy DX 959. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Made a trip to Mount Greylock in Massachusetts. Barefoot on my McKinley with a Stryker antenna I was able to make 80 mile ground wave contacts and shoot a little skip.

I'm in central MD

I’ve been trying to get a healthy SWR for years! I started with a Wilson 2000 on the stock mount, then an aftermarket mount with a DIY grounding strap as it’s on a plastic arm. It was slowly getting worse so I went back to the stock mount/coax with a firestick 2. Over the winter my SWR slowly degraded to 8.5.

Over the winter I worked on a plan, Project DXing Hail Mary (I know, I know, I just couldn’t resist the fun name). A friend gave me a 2019 Cobra Classic Nightwatch with a broken mic, so I found a CB shop operating out of a shipping container to have it fixed and tuned, then I picked up a better coax and a proper grounding strap. I verified everything was properly grounded to the frame, no ground to the antenna its self, then fired it up!

The S/RF and calibration functions worked fine, but except for the occasional hardly visible twitch, SWR did nothing. Thinking it was broken, I got an external SWR reader. At or below an SWR of 1. I tried my old bearcat 880, it’s probably fried from 6 months of use with an SWR of 8.5, but it’s fancy digital display showed 1.17. Either it’s not reading any power coming back because it’s fried and not putting any power out, or I have a near perfect SWR. I reinstalled the cobra and called for a radio check; the results were… inconclusive. That story could be a post all its own, so I’ll include it separately at the end.

After YEARS of struggling to get my SWR below 3 AND my antenna still being on a plastic arm, I just can’t believe I have a near perfect SWR. Is it possible something is giving me an inaccurate reading, or do I really have a perfect SWR?

~

The radio check story:

I’m in an area with low CB usage, so when i called for a radio check I only got one “you’re good” from someone circling the lot right in front of me. I responded with “Thank you, have a wonderful day.”, but she must have heard “Thanks Dude, have a wonderful day” because she started chewing me out, saying “Who are you calling a dude? I’m a chick, not a dude”. Her transmission was coming through clear, so I responded “I know, I’m also a woman so I get it, but I didn’t call you a dude. How well am I coming through on your end?”. She was too intent on chewing me out to answer my question, so I shut off the radio. I obviously wasn’t coming through clearly, but it’s unclear whose radio was at fault.

So...uhh... how do you folks pry these off? On the plus side, I dont have hail dents under those anymore... Any 4Runner drivers out tuere running a 102 with quad magnets? Looking for tips on placement. I may have accidentally plopped this down off center. Oops. Should I ditch the spring? For grins I checked swr and was getting around 1.5 where it is.

EDIT: Moved behind roof rail. Magnets not flush thanks to the humps. Still holds strong but I'll be goofing around with placement to see if I can get a little better swr readings. Will the magnets not getting a good flush connection cause issues? Should I try one of the Tram tri mounts? Here is the current placement https://imgur.com/a/l9ksVu8

Edit 2 - Moved to the rear for flat surface. Getting 1.4 swr flat which I'm good with. https://imgur.com/a/GNMZLvV

I’ve purchased a Cobra 29 LTD Classic from eBay, and it’ll be coming in tomorrow.

The listing shows the following, and I had some questions about how this works. I’ll be putting in my Peterbilt 389 for work.

I don’t know much about what I’m looking at in this description, I was hoping someone could instruct me how to tune this radio with my 6ft whip antenna without messing something up. And I don’t want to destroy my coworkers ears so if I need to make certain adjustments I need to know how to do that too. I’ll do my best to answer questions un the comments but for the most part I don’t know much about watts, swing, modulation, calibration or anything. I’ve done my best to look things up online but I’m having trouble finding answers especially with these modifications listed and understanding thank you very very much.

Hello!

I am experiencing issues with very poor reception even after tuning SWR to be below one on channel 1 and 40. I am using a president Andy II radio and a k30 35” whip mounted in the middle of my roof. Pictures included. What could my issue be?

So I have a post in this thread but I don’t know how to add pics after the fact but bottom line is I’m having swr issues even tho I feel like I’ve grounded everything properly(reads at a 3). I’ve ground away the paint at the antenna mounting point and ran a wire to the frame and body during 2 different test and nothing changes. I have a roof mount but it’s the wrong connector so could someone either give me a better idea on how to ground the antenna or point me in the direction of the proper magnetic mount to get.(in the pics the red and black wires without the harness tape are the power and ground for the radio itself)